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Microsoft is making a big noise about its coming touchscreen capability. It is being placed front-and-center as a revolutionary new interface that will be delivered with Windows 7 – the OS that will supersede the lackluster Vista. Microsoft is pretending that Apple hasn’t already delivered a touch interface a year ago with the iPhone and will almost certainly be delivering a touch interface with the next version of OS X, which will surely hit the streets before Windows 7.

But never mind, Microsoft can demonstrate its touchscreen publicly, right now, on screens much bigger than the iPhone will ever have, and Bill Gates, thinking perhaps that Microsoft has invented a better mouse trap, is confidently predicting that:

The touch screen will kill the mouse!!

No it won’t Bill.

Here’s why:

The main problem is a simple. Arms weigh quite a lot – roughly about 10lbs each. If you have to keep your arms in the air to use an interface, you’ll very quickly revert to a mouse – within about 20 minutes is my guess. (Think of that tortuous exercise where you hold your arms out for as long as you can). What this means is that touchscreen is usable interface primarily for a tablet PC, or one that has a screen that can be laid flat or almost flat.

A second reason why the mouse will remain alive and well is that it gives you more flexibility in where you sit, as does the keyboard. You put keyboard and mouse at a preferred distance from the touchscreen is more constraining. This isn’t to say that the touchscreen hasn’t got a role, just that it won’t commit mousicide

Incidentally, Bill also believes that voice input will kill the keyboard. I don’t think that’s on either, because of the noise pollution of people shouting at their computers, but it is feasible in some contexts.

Competing With Apple

Microsoft seems to believe that the way to compete with Apple is to beat it at the interface. This problem is similar to the one it has with Internet Explorer competing with Firefox . Microsoft let the market slip and Firefox didn’t just develop a better browser, it developed its own business model and business ecosystem, which ws completely different to Microsoft’s or Netscape’s. When Microsoft realized what was happening it was too late. It cannot catch Firefox now because it cannot penetrate the Firefox business model.

The same has happened with Apple, only more severely. Microsoft was all over the place with Vista (see 10 Reasons Why Vista Is A Disaster), but the worst of it was that it had a naive belief that a better looking interface (the Aero interface) would fix the perception of Windows being dowdy, when compared to the Mac.

But that wasn’t the point of competition that mattered. The Mac was also winning because OS X was very very reliable, because the Macs looked better just to look at, because Apple had created its own retail channel, because you actually could get support and because of iTunes and the iPod and later the iPhone.

It was and is all about ecosystem. The best that Microsoft can hope for is parity with the OS X interface, but that won’t stem the strong drift from Windows to OS X. In fact, right now, I can’t think of anything that will.

The AntiVirus industry is gradually evolving into a white-listing industry – due to the fact that AV technology simply doesn’t cut the mustard (for more information visit or revisit and of the AVID -AntiVirus Is Dead postings). This has its consequences.

Aside from my incessant campaign to point out that AV technology is flawed, the AV vendors eventually ran into volume problems which further strained their credibility. The number of viruses grew so large that the idea of tracking them by signature became more absurd by the month. Kaspersky, for example, reported discovering over 2 million new viruses last year. The whitelist idea of just tracking the 6,000 or so valid executables that run on a typical PC is far more practical as well as being far more secure.

However, there is always the issue of vetting the programs that you don’t know and this is an issue whether you use a white list or a black list.

NovaShield, a fairly recent start-up, briefed me last week on its approach to this problem. The technical obstacles to behavior tracking vary according to the OS, and the only OS that really matters at the moment is Windows, because that’s where nearly all the malware lives. So that’s where NovaShield has focused its attention.

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The problem of tracking behavior is neatly illustrated by the above graphic, the right hand side of which provides an illustration of all the low level events that occur in Windows in respect of the single high level event of displaying a web page. It’s three day old spaghetti.

Most behavior recognition software tries to trap “bad behavior” at the low level – which is difficult. What NovaShield has that makes a difference is a mapping of low-level events to specific high-level events. Using this is can set rules on what high level behaviors to report (keyboard logging, network connections, opening up ports, etc.) and then monitor the low level events in order to recognize the high level events.

Doing this NoavShield claims to be ahead of competitive behavioral recognition products in its ability to detect backdoors, keyloggers, rootkits, spam engines, trojans and worms (more than twice as effective in some cases). Note though that behavioral tracking still doesn’t catch everything. Ultimately, it never can, because some benign software is identical in behavior to some malevolent software. Consider, for example, remote control software; it’s only benign if its context of use is benign.

Products like NovaShield are usually deployed as embedded components of other AV or whitelisting products. Because of its efficacy, it’s likely that NovaShield will attract OEM deals with other vendors.

I’m hoping that behavioral tracking will continue to improve. Whitelisting is highly effective in business environments but is likely to prove too complex for the average home PC user to employ effectively. Highly effective behavioral recognition may be what makes the difference.

I noticed an interesting graphic in a virtualization article entitled The Virtualization Opportunity which purports to show likely desktop virtualization winners and losers. I largely agree with what it is suggesting. Here’s my cut on some of the companies it mentions:

• VMware: VMware is clearly in the catbird seat. It was already doing well with server virtualization, when suddenly it has desktop virtualization thrust upon it. Not just free bread, but jam too! The worst outcome for VMware in desktop virtualization is that it will finds the market very competitive.
• Citrix: Citrix’s problem is that it currently owns the vast majority of the market for PCs that run session based computing which is estimated to be about 15 million seats. Citrix thus has an entrenched position to defend. That explains why it has been in acquisition mode (with Ardence, Xen, etc.) The traditional Citrix desktop solution is less exensive than a virtualized desktop, but nevertheless it’s likely that the virtual desktop will supersede that solution over time. Citrix needs to execute well to compete strongly with VMware. If it doesn’t it will be a loser.
• IBM: IBM is very likely to be a winner, because it sold off its PC and thin client business before desktop virtualization was a twinkle in anyone’s eye. So it is unlikely to lose desktop revenue, but it can gain it by selling virtualization blades. It can also sell associated management software. It is likely that IBM will also establish a new hosting business for virtual desktops.
• Hewlett-Packard: HP is in the uncomfortable situation where it has almost as much to lose as it has to win. As more and more desktop units move into the data center, it loses PC sales but it can replace these with blade sales and sales of broker software (as it clearly intends to do). To its credit, it has done well in partnering with Citrix and VMware – it has the lion’s share of the server-side business already, but this means that growing its share may be difficult. It will probably also be an important partner for Microsoft as it tries to establish a market for Hyper-V, but that merely means VMware revenue going to Mircosoft. HP is unlikely to lose customers to any other hardware vendor, but in its own customer base it’s pretty much a zero sum game. HP’s goal in the market must be to take market share from Dell, which it could do as it has a much broader set of offerings for desktop virtualization. Nevertheless it has to execute well. Like IBM, HP also has the opportunity to establish a new hosting business for virtual desktops.
• Dell: Of the major hardware vendors Dell has the most to lose and, to be honest, it’s hard to see that it won’t lose business to both IBM and HP. Dell doesn’t have either a software business or a hosting business. Neither has it yet established a strong portfolio of offerings for desktop virtualization. It has an agreement for PC streaming with Citrix, but this is likely to be a limited market. Dell needs to rectify this as soon as possible.
• Sun Microsystems: Sun has been in this game for longer than most other vendors and has everything to gain and very little to lose in desktop virtualization. Although it has an installed Sun Ray desktop base, it’s pretty much all new revenue for Sun.
• Microsoft: At first glance, Microsoft is in a similar situation to HP in that it looks very much like it’s a zero-sum game. Desktop virtualization helps considerably in Vista adoption because it can cut the hardware costs, but it doesn’t present a new revenue stream. Microsoft is taking some of the air out of the desktop virtualization market by offering Hyper-V at no cost. It may dent VMware’s desktop virtualization revenue streams, but it’s not going to generate revenue. If Microsoft is going to generate new revenue, it has to make a play in the virtualization management area, where VMware dominates. That’s why Microsoft acquired Kidaro SoftGrid AssetMetrix and Calista. It means to play strongly in this market. Unfortunately, Microsoft is vulnerable to losing revenue in the longer if the regular PC refresh rate diminishes – and that it is very likely to happen as the desktop virtualizes. The nightmare scenario for Microsoft would be that Linux with Wine became viable as a virtual desktop. If this happens then Microsoft has everything to lose. I don’t see this as likely though.
• Other PC Vendors: We can lump Lenovo, Acer, Sony and many other PC manufacturers together here. They all stand to lose and its hard to see how they can win out in any way. The only exception is Apple. Its proprietary technology and lack of business market share are in its favor.
• Intel and AMD: You can consider both of these vendors together in terms of the challenge it creates. They are both likely to lose out because desktop virtualization untimately leads to less cpus being sold, especially now that cpus are multicore.

An important aspect to this market is that the consumer PC is starting to diverge from the corporate PC. This is highly disruptive and could lead to a general restructuring of the whole computer industry.

This is a posting in the Virtualization Focus Series. Click here to see an index of such postings.

The 3G iPhone Cometh

Apple’s iPhone success is unusual in one very lucrative-for-Apple respect. The hype around the product is enduring, to the point where it is easy to believe that it is actually hardwired. Nothing else can explain the current buzz around this remarkable product, which Apple is about to upgrade according to the Apple-dumpster-divers. These obsessive/compulsive Apple watchers have latched on to the fact (if it is a fact) that Apple stores are running down their inventory of iPhones, which can only mean that a brand new 3G iPhone is going to be launched at the June Apple developer conference.

So it’s time to speculate. What will the new iPhone features be – aside from the fact that it will:

be 3G, have GPS, a higher resolution camera, a Bluetooth wireless keyboard, function as a games console and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

It will also be available in pink.

The strange thing about hype-generated speculation is that no matter how impressive the iPhone upgrade turns out to be, the one everyone dreamed about in their speculative blog postings is sure to be much better. That’s why hard-wired hype is such an invaluable feature, because it means that the speculation will return for iPhone 3.0 no matter how much of a disappointment iPhone 2.0 is.

Music 2.0

Is this a 2.0 too far?

I suspect so, but let’s see. Korean computer engineers have invented a digital music format with separate controls on the sound volume for each musical instrument; guitar, strings, drum, base and voice. The only advantage I can think of to this is that you can turn the voice off and you’ve got yourself a Karaoke track. I guess if you’re a musician you can turn an instrument off and “improve” a recording. And if you’re me, you’ll be happy to ignore the capability completely and play music as it emerged from the recording studio.

So the question is, will this take off?

The new format is actually trademarked Music 2.0 and has file extension MT9 (as opposed to MP3). It was selected as a possible new digital music standard at an April meeting of the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG), the international body of the digital music and video industry. As the file format improves the versatility of music files, I guess there’s no reason not to use the new format. Maybe iPhone 2.0 will support Music 2.0.

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

What a virtual world we travel through sometimes. A (relatively) innocent marketing ploy designed to draw in backlinks for a financial services comparison website in London has stirred up media attention ranging from the front page of Digg to coverage on Fox News.

The story 13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers was a fake, but not really a hoax. It was a parody that was a little too true-to-life, where the term true-to-life means written in the modern sensationalist reporting style. It was so good that www.money.co.uk who posted the fake story has now been obliged to put up the warning:

NB: This story is a parody and is not intended to be taken seriously.

The fake story got on to the front page of Digg, with just under 2,500 diggs and was reviewed over 200 times on StumbleUpon. It generated thousands of backlinks and was read by hundreds of thousands of readers worldwide and, to nobody’s surprise, it got coverage on Fox News. Well it would wouldn’t it?

Lyndon Antcliff, Internet marketeer and the author of the story told Wired magazine “The thing is, I tried to make it as ridiculous as possible so it would be obvious that it would be fake” (Especially to Fox News, which always checks the accuracy of its stories.)